Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (40 page)

It was all part of the strange alignment of forces that seemed to link them all together. First, Comiskey, and now, perhaps, Arnold Rothstein himself—suddenly wanting to play ball with the ballplayers.

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However incredible it seemed to them, it was nonetheless extremely comforting. It gave them reason to believe they would win this victory. And that was all that really mattered to them.

The State continued to press for the right to use the confessions. The Judge decided to listen to what the players had to say in order to determine whether they had or hadn't signed immunity waivers. To do this, he dismissed the jury and permitted a private interrogation.

Cicotte was questioned by his lawyer, Ben Short: "Was any promise of immunity made to you?"

Cicotte repeated what had happened when he was brought to the State's Attorney's office by Alfred Austrian. He said he had signed something, but didn't know what it was.

Gorman: "Didn't Replogle tell you that what you said could be used against you, and read the waiver?"

Cicotte: "I don't remember. When I told Judge MacDonald I didn't know any more than I told him, he got sore and said, 'What are you trying to do, bull me?' I told the Judge I wasn't worried because Replogle and Austrian had promised I would be taken care of. Then they took me to the washroom where they all talked some more…."

Ben Short then put Joe Jackson in the chair. "Did they say anything to you about immunity?"

Jackson also told the Judge that Austrian had made vague promises that he would not be prosecuted.

Short: Did Austrian tell you that Cicotte had been taken care of and you would be, too?

Jackson: Yes. He said that after confessing I could go anywhere—all the way to the Portuguese Islands, the Judge said. Then they gave me two bailiffs to protect me, and I went out and got polluted.

Short: Were you drunk when you went before the Grand Jury?

Jackson: About half, I guess. I'd been boozing.

Short: Did Mr. Replogle tell you that you have to sign an immunity waiver and that you would later be held responsible criminally for what you told the jurors?

Jackson: He read a lot of stuff to to me. I don't know what it was.

Short: Didn't you read what you signed?

Jackson: No. They'd given me their promise. I'd've signed my death warrant if they asked me to.

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In the afternoon, Judge Charles MacDonald was called to testify. He recounted his confrontations with the three confessors and denied that any of them had been deprived of their rights.

Following this, Judge Hugo Friend summoned the jury to return to the Court. He had decided that the confessions had been made voluntarily. They would be admissible as part of the State's case. The confessions, however, were to implicate the confessors only.

To Cicotte, this was a frightening omen. The Judge's decision was noised around the court building as another big victory for the prosecution. The inside talk, usually a reliable weathervane, had it that the three confessing ballplayers would be hardest hit in the verdict. Not only had they named themselves, but they were deeply enmeshed in the web as spun by Bill Burns. Except for Gandil, the other five were mentioned only in passing….

As for the indicted gamblers, some were already making book that they would go free. Except for David Zelser (Bennett), there wasn't a thing on any of those on trial.

The State's Attorney was riding high with his pending victory. He still held Billy Maharg and Joe Gedeon on his bench, ready to go in at the end in case he needed them. If there was any weakness in the State's case, Judge Friend pointed it, out that afternoon: "There is so little evidence against these men (Buck Weaver, Happy Felsch, and gambler Carl Zork) that I doubt if I would allow a verdict of guilty to stand if it were brought in. But as some evidence has been brought against them, I will not dismiss them unless the State is willing to
nolle prosse
."

George Gorman had no such intention.

On Wednesday, July 27, the defense put David Zelser on the stand. When questioned by his lawyer, Max Lusker, Zelser categorically denied he had even been mixed up in the scandal. No, he was not Bennett. He insisted he had never met Burns or Maharg. As for Arnold Rothstein, the man Burns had claimed he was working for, Zelser declared he had never even seen him.

When cross-examined, however, he nervously admitted he had bet huge sums on the Cincinnati Reds. At first he did not remember in what room he stayed while in Cincinnati, but when confronted with hotel records, his memory improved. As it turned out, he had not only lived in the same room with Attell, but had registered at the hotel for him! And this room, Tyrrell reminded the court, "is the same large sample room where Attell kept his money in cases and hidden under the mattress! It is the same room where the gamblers hatched their conspiracy, and to which Arnold Rothstein had a private wire from New York."

"Bedfellows," the prosecution reminded the Court, "are seldom coincidence."

"Irrelevant!" snapped the defense.

"Next witness," said the Judge.

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He was Billy Maharg. He gave his age as forty-one, his address in Philadelphia; he said he had been raised on a farm, had been mixed up in the fight game as a middleweight, had played major-league ball in one game in Detroit and one game in Philadelphia with the Phillies.

"How come only one game?" Short wanted to know.

"Well, there was a player's strike in 1912—" Maharg explained.

"And you scabbed!" Short snapped at him.

Again, Short was a poor baseball historian. Maharg had been recruited into service so that the Detroit Tigers could put a team on the field to sustain their franchise. The regular players had refused to play, protesting Ban Johnson's highhanded action in suspending and firing Ty Cobb when he went into the stands after a heckling fan.

Questioned by George Gorman, Maharg was an articulate witness. He had told his story enough times to feel completely at home with it.

Q: It has been intimated by defense attorneys that you are a ballplayer named "Peaches" Graham. Is that correct?

A: No. I have never been anything but Billy Maharg. I know Graham, but I am not he.

Q: Do you know Bill Burns?

A: Yes, I've known him for ten years.

Q: Did you see him in September, 1919.

A: Yes, he was in New York and sent me a telegram to come to see him. He was going on a hunting trip.

I met him at the Ansonia Hotel.

Maharg told how he failed to raise the money in Philadelphia, or when they met Rothstein in New York, and how, later, another telegram from Burns sent him hurrying to Cincinnati where Burns told him that Attell had gotten Rothstein to finance the deal.

Q: Did you see Attell that night? [After the first game.]

A: Yes. About 9:30. I asked him why Rothstein had finally come across. Attell said that he had reminded Rothstein that he had saved his life once in a shooting scrape, and finally Rothstein agreed.

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Attell said he was going to get the money, all right. I told him that it looked to me like he was lying. We made arrangements to meet him again at the Sinton the next day.

Like Burns, Maharg then identified Zelser as Bennett. Bennett had told him that the ballplayers could not get any money "because they had told all the gamblers in the East and West, and it was impossible to get any real money down!" Attell then told Maharg that Arnold Rothstein had $300,000 on the Series and when it was over, "they'd all get their money."

Maharg, like Burns, remained unshakable. His story was essentially the same as Burns,'s for they had shared the whole experience together. His auspices—Ban Johnson—were also the same. The sameness added a strong layer of testimony to the State's apparently already strong case.

But there was one more inning to play.

On the morning of July 28, the battery of defense attorneys seemed surprisingly confident as they filed into Court. Their eagerness to get going infected the courtroom. There was an air of expectancy as Judge Friend entered and the clerk called the Court to order.

Thomas Nash, for the defense, rose and called William "Kid" Gleason to the stand. Nash went immediately to the point.

Q: Mr. Gleason, will you tell the Court, when did you arrive in Cincinnati for the 1919 Series?

A: Tuesday morning, the day before the first game.

Q: Did you get to the ball park for practice?

A: I did, about ten o'clock.

Q: How long did you stay?

A: For about an hour and a half.

Q: Then if Burns said he saw the defendants in a room at the Sinton Hotel in the forenoon, he is not telling the truth?

Gorman rose quickly to object. Judge Friend sustained it. The witness was not qualified to determine that.

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Nash rephrased the question.

Q: Well, these defendants could not have been in a room at the Sinton during the hours between ten and twelve that morning?

A: Not while they were practicing.

The spectators reacted. Burns had clearly testified about a meeting on that morning that was vital to the conspiracy. The question was, could this kind of testimony shake Burns's effectiveness as a witness?

Could it really shake the entire structure of his story?

The State then cross-examined Gleason, trying to challenge his recollection of time. Gleason was forced to admit that he could not be absolutely certain just what time the players left the hotel for practice.

Nash rose again and asked Gleason what must have seemed to many a startling question for the defense to ask:

Q: Mr. Gleason, I will ask, from your experience, have you an opinion as to whether these defendants executed the plays during the World Series to the best of their abilities?

Startling! Hadn't Gleason's feeling about this been clearly enough indicated on numerous previous occasions? Hadn't he stated to Comiskey in no uncertain terms that he felt the Series was being sold out by his boys? Hadn't he publicly berated Risberg and Cicotte and Gandil in the lobby of the Sinton on the night after the first game? Hadn't he, in the locker room after the fifth game in Chicago, even accused them of selling out?

What defense attorney in his right mind would ask such a question of Kid Gleason?

Then, to compound the mystery, George Gorman leaped to his feet. "Objection!" he cried out.

Even more startling. Why should the State wish to stop Gleason from spilling his suspicions?

"Sustained!" Judge Friend ordered.

Gleason was followed by Ray Schalk.

Nash then repeated the questions he had asked Gleason and received the same answers.

Gorman challenged Schalk as he had Gleason. But he added a telling point: Q: On the evening of the second game, state whether you saw the defendants together in a room at the file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:47 AM

Sinton.

A: I did.

The court buzzed with this admission. Gorman smiled. "That's all, thank you," he said.

Ben Short approached the witness and made a desperate try to cross him up.

Q: Captain Eddie Collins and some of the other players were there, were they not?

Schalk stared at him coldly.

A: No.

Thomas Nash then asked Schalk that same, startling question: Q: Mr. Schalk, in your opinion, did the defendants play the 1919 World Series to the fullest extent of their abilities?

Schalk, the man who had gone raging to Gleason that Williams had not been following signs, had deliberately thrown bad pitches. Schalk, the man who in his fury had grabbed Williams under the grandstand and worked him over with his fists…. Again how could the defense ask him for such an opinion?

And again, incredibly, Gorman shouted "Objection!"

The defense put Eddie Collins, Dickie Kerr, and Roy Wilkinson on the stand, repeated the same questions it had asked of Gleason and Schalk. They all gave the same answers and were promptly dismissed. Dickie Kerr was contemptuous of the whole affair. "I came nine hundred miles to tell this!"

Nash questioned the White Sox trainer, H. W. Stephenson.

Q: I'll ask you if you gave Swede Risberg any medicine on the evening before the first game.

A: I did. He complained of a cold on his chest.

Nash was laying it in for the jury to ponder: if the Swede had played badly that day, he was, after all, a sick man….

The defense then made one final salvo at the bastions of Charles Comiskey's financial power. Ben Short put Harry Grabiner on the stand, and finally managed to get into the record of statistics of the Chicago file:///C|/Palm%20Stuff/Eliot,%20Asinof%20-%20Eig...tml]/Eight%20Men%20Out%20by%20Eliot%20Asinof.html2/17/2004 11:47:47 AM

White Sox gate receipts. In 1919: $521,175.75. In 1920, they almost doubled: $910,206.59. And 1920, he made clear, was the year after the defendants had allegedly conspired to destroy his equity!

There was an audible response from the jurors and spectators alike. With this, the final examination of witnesses was concluded. The summations would begin on the following day.

The ballplayers filed out of the courtroom elated that their defense attorneys had rallied with a fine closing day. There was plenty of the backslapping and excited jabbering that went with a sense of pending triumph. The inclusion of the 1920 receipts was said to be especially telling. Ben Short claimed there was no greater reaction by the jury to anything that preceded it during the entire testimony.